General

Although only starting my current role as lecturer in pharmaceutics in 2010, I have a long history with Aston University.

First of all, I studied here for a BSc in Combined Honours Chemistry and French, graduating in 2004, part of which involved a sandwich year in a university research laboratory in Montpellier, France.

I then studied for a PhD on the subject of formulation and characterisation of particulate delivery systems for TB vaccines, again at Aston University, under the supervision of Prof. Yvonne Perrie.

Before taking up my current role, I was an Aston based post-doc, acting as Formulation Research Fellow for the UK Medicines for Children Research Network.

Research interests

Member of the Medicines Research Group.

Based within the pharmaceutics laboratories of Aston Pharmacy School, my main area of research is the formulation of age-appropriate medicines, developing a research portfolio with a focus on the identification of priorities for further research in older, established medicines, with an emphasis on extemporaneous formulations and their quality.

Extemporaneous formulation – that is the process of compounding ingredients to prepare a medicine for an individual patient when no commercial forms are available – is extremely prevalent for the paediatric and geriatric population, due to a severe lack of age-appropriate dosage forms available on the market.

In an attempt to tackle the major issues, our research involves engagement with representative groups of patients, carers and prescribers, whilst robust pharmaceutical characterisation of problematic formulations requiring investigation will also be performed. This is being conducted in order to both inform current practice and strive towards improved, age-appropriate formulations.

Current projects are dealing with the lack of age-appropriate HIV medication for the paediatric population, taste-masking technologies, development of age-appropriate excipients for neonatal patients, and also development of stable and suitable paediatric formulations for the treatment of rare metabolic disorders.